REGIONAL HISTORY

The area of the mid-Ural mountains with its foothills was once called the "Great Perm" (Perm Velikaya). It was first populated by Finno-Ugric and Turkish tribal peoples. During the period of the Great Migration, this borderland between Asia and Europe was also the scene for diverse migrational movements. The largest ethnic group on this territory is formed by the Komi-Permyaks. In addition, the region is also inhabited by Mari, Manses and Udmurts. The Turkish peoples who live in the area (e.g. Bashkirs and Tartars) were subject to the Volga Bulgarians from the 10th century until the 13th century. Later, they belonged to the Kingdom of the Golden Horde and then to the Khanate of Kazan. After the fall of Kazan in 1552, the colonization of the area through Russian farmers boomed, beginning in the area of the upper Kama. Before this boom, during the 14th und 15th centuries, there were only scattered attempts at colonization.


In front of the museum in Motovilikha

 

In 1451, the Grand Duke of Moscow sent his first provincial governor to Tsherdyn, the main settlement of the Komi-Permyaks. Soon, the conversion of the local population was well-underway. In 1472, Ivan the Third ordered a military campaign aimed at the upper Kama, thus solidifying Moscow's territorial claims.

However, 1558 and 1568 were probably the two most decisive years for the colonization of the Ural mountains, when Ivan IV. (the Terrible) endowed the merchants and entrepenneurs G.F. Stroganov and Ya.A.Stroganov with wide regions on the Kama as heretidary property (wotshina) with the right of colonizing, building towns and cities, mining salt and other mineral resources. The middle and northern parts of the Ural mountains were soon to be populated by free farmers from Northern Russia, while the South was settled by people from Central Russia. The importance of the "inner" migrational dynamic was also always important. The climax of the settlement movement in the Ural mountains was reached between the second half of the 16th century and the early 18th century. During this period, the central Ural became the starting point and the central trading place for the further colonization of Siberia.

As early as the 18th century, the Ural became Russia's most important metallurgical region through its rich natural resources; since the mid-1700s, metals were also produced for export. A number of roadways connected the region's centers with one another and with the central parts of the country. The "tract of Kazan" from Kazan to Perm is one of these roads. The most famous of these roads is the so-called "Siberian Tract". It led from Perm via Kungur and Krasnoumfimsk toward the South, finally reaching Ekaterinburg and Kamyshlov.

Largely, farmers from the surrounding area worked in the salt mines, ore mines and foundries. In the early 18th century, these farmers were "written over" to the enterprises which ran the mines (cf. the term "pripisnoye krestyanstvo"): de facto, free farmers became serf-laborers. One made them work in the factory and in the connected service industry (i.e. haulage, timber work etc.) but also used them to build new factories and mines.

In administrative terms, the area of the upper Kama first belonged the Tobolsk gubernia. In 1775, through the administrative reforms under Catherine II., an indepedent Perm gubernia was created. The old laborer's settlement of Yegoshikha, located where the river of the same name flows into the Kama, was renamed and built up to the capital of the region. Perm received its town-rights in 1781.

During the 19th century, the town only developed haltingly. The number of its inhabitants grew from 3,900 (1787) to 7,385 (1835) and to 12,439 in 1860. It was only at the turn of the century, as the large-scale industrialization of the country came into full swing, that a drastic increase of Perm's population could be observed. By 1897, the population counted 45,000 inhabitants, and shortly before the outbreak of World War One, it had even reached 108,000. With the connection of the Northern Ural to the railroad network (1906-1909), it became possible to penetrate new markets; the Perm region now reached its developmental peak. During the Soviet period (especially before the Second World War), Perm became the center of the heavy industry in the Western Ural. It also became an important infrastructural knot. After the Second World War, the Northern Ural was not subject to a great deal of change, although the traditional industrial branches such as coal mining and steel production began to coexist with new fields such as chemical and petrochemical enterprises.

In 1863, a cannon-factory was built near the settlement of Motovilikha (today a part of Perm), which later became the largest machine factory in the region. Today, the grounds of the "Motovilichinskiye savody" house a military museum which illustrates the production history of heavy armaments such as cannons, tanks and rockets.

Marion Krause, Michael Orawski